Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (52 page)

So this is coming home. Half strange already, re-estranged. How small it is, and bright, ablaze with candles. Green with holly. And so great a company within, so many faces. The master of this hall must keep his Lightfast handsomely. She looks about the hall for Grevil and for Barbary.

And sees herself, as in a glass—that pale red hair, that cruel dress—at Corbet's side. He holds a cup to Margaret's mirror, to his bride; and she must drink.

Star-crack and shattering: a heel to the heart. Then deepless cold beneath. It takes her breath away. And rising, scrabbling at the edges of the here and now, she thinks:
But I am Ashes.

And slowly then, a dawning:
Annot?

It is Grevil's hall: she knows that. Here is here; but when is now? For the meddling aunt is here—again or still?—unwithered now. Unwintered. But the bridegroom is as old as ever. Old as January. Lord of winter and my lady's huntsman, with his shot and snare of dearth, death, cruelty, and sickness. There is always a bride for him, a new green girl, as there is Ashes, over and again. They reign in hell.

Even in her thrill of fear, she thinks:
but Annot got away.
And then:
Will I?

Old Corbet turns to her—to Ashes?—beckoning. Holds out his cup. A conjuration?
It is ritual
—she'd have it so—
to greet the Sun.
But in her blood and bones, she knows it as a spell, to bind his once and future thrall. Unwilling, shivering, she is drawn to him: a step, another step. Within his orb, as in her glass, she sees a ghostly retinue: his train of brides and boys. All had drunk to him, and all were eaten; they must dance. A step, and he will swirl her in.

But at her back, she hears the loud bewailing of the Fool: the play goes on. Recalls her. When she turns to look, he signs frantically at her:
stalk, stalk.
It is her office.

Slipped in among strangers: an alien, a ghost, a spy. A cheat. Would the company cry out on her? Demand their own invested Ashes? Think she'd stifled her, that phantom other? They don't see her: they see Ashes with her soulbag. She's her coat. Made bold by anonymity, she prowls among them, stalking children to their dens. In cupboards, under chairs, behind an apron or the linen-press, or halfway up the stairs. Some flirting with her shadow; others cowering; some struggling in their mothers’ arms.

But stalking, she is stalked. Now in and out amid the revellers, old Corbet edges up to her. At every turn, she turns from him. At every twist, he tails.
I am Ashes: we do not conjoin,
she thinks.
You are not in my ephemeris.
A knot of company is now athwart him, rallying. They clap his shoulder, calling out their lewd congratulations. His bride is young. He is fortunate. And she—! To sheathe him to the hilt, to take the measure of his puissance. Bear his sons. At every halt, they drink to him, and he must take his rouse. They none of them see Ashes.

Are they ghosts then? Am I?
No question, Corbet's real: like Annis, he is absolute. She tries it in her mind. A place—the sky, a ring of stones, this hall—though fortune level it, is still the same; time changes. Or else
where
—space—travels, like a ring on a strand of silk. She runs it back and forth. She loops the string.

Where I stand is why.

And souls?

If she's a ghost, she is corporeal, embodied: she can touch the children, cheek and chin, her fingers slithering in their snotty tears, or gritted on a brickred rage. A bellowing. She sains them with her thumb, she smutches them, much as a shepherd raddles lambs. This child is one of Ashes’ flock. Death, pass by.

...
in a vixen's belly, in a babby—and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey...?

The nonsense is the same. There's comfort.

Now some raffish lads—that pack o gallantry that Hob cried down?—come sauntering round to watch. Sleek idling fellows, more or less, half in and out of women's tire. Goddesses dishevelled, slumming it. Constellations offstage. Capon-crammed, wine-drunken, in their stitchery of silk, they watch the husbandmen at work.

...wi’ an urchin in its mouth!

What, no mustard?
says the first of them loudly.

The Fool looks sharp at him.
None, for your mam eats sausages wi'out.

Fool's not bad,
the second says.

A scrape and clatter. Madam rises from her chair in anger, and the gabble's stilled. The guising falters for a beat; then at her nod goes on. Her servant slips to Corbet's side, she whispers urgently. A glance at Ashes:
Later.
He is retrograde.

And yet another child peers out at Ashes from behind the tablecloth. There is a giggling, clapped short, and then a humping wriggling in the rushes, like a mole at work. She cannot stay.

But ever as she hunts, she turns: and at the inward of the labyrinth is still the great conjunction of the myth. So many planets in one house—the sky at what ill-fortuned birth? First, the lord of the ascendant, old baleful Slae and his Perseis, his bride: scarce April when he bears her off. Bright Perseis, the errant star, is mutinous: storm clouds her face. Behind them sits the whited moon: the bawd, the panderer. And at her knee, a wan young woman, near her time—as full of child as the plum is of the stone—who pleads her sister's youth, in tears. She coys a child in petticoats, who twists away in loathing of the man in black. Who treads a garland at their feet, let fall. And then like some attendant moon, a young man who is elsewhere, or he would be: in his garden, say, engrafting his new apricocks or down a long pleached alley at the farthest end from all this potherment. A green thought in their shade. No seed of his, this crew of quarrelers, he seems to think, but in-laws merely. Slips.

But then a sweet-sharp sort of body, like an apple-john—an old retainer—says,
Master, ‘tis t'wrenboys come to halse us all. Will you not attend?

Reluctantly, he rouses, turns to the brangle at his board.
Come, shall we hear their catastrophe?

The crowd is closer now, attending eagerly. The players too: but they dissemble.
In comes I, awd baggy breeks,
says one.
Then mingle-mangle with their yardsticks, and the shaking of the sheets.

And another,
'Tis their mystery now. Snick up

Stately, Hob commands the very eye of Cloud. He raps his staff, and bids the champions,
Walk in.

And brought his breeches down,
says the slighting player.

Who's great with child by him already,
says that player.
And will spawn a Sun. See, he brags in her belly.

Clish! clash! and down the braggart tumbles. Now only Leapfire stands.

In comes old Lightfast who will slay his son.

The nurse tugs Ashes’ sleeve.
Mistress?
In her voice is the oddest mix of deference, affront, and worry.
Will you come? You've not sained t'Master's heir.

Last of all the bairns, she finds the child in petticoats. He's in the wainscot parlor, kneeling with an open book before him on the floor. She knows him.

We're Ashes both of us,
says Noll.
You're black. And I'm green.
He looks at her.
Does the coat come off?

And Margaret that is Ashes thinks,
I chose you. Long ago and now. I will.

Elsewhere, the lath swords clash; the hero falls.

She cannot speak; but she foretells him. At her beckoning, he lifts his face to her. With her thumb she smutches him, on lip and brow. She draws the sign for
sky.
She cannot change his lot, but only prophesy. He is what he was born to be. Though he will die, and leave no kindred of his body, yet his book will live. She marks him out for solitude, for study and regret.
Live and long.

The fiddle tune begins.
Will you see them dance?
he says.
They are most brave and curious.

By two and two, and in and out, the guisers dance. They heel it to the small pipe and fiddle, and the thrubbing drum: three tunes. An eerie music, edgewise and ecstatic. They dance with longswords, weaving and wheeling, doing and undoing thresholds, henges, doorways, and at last a knot of swords.

"Ah,” said old Pipe-and-Tabor, “but thou shouldst have seen our Mistress Master Morland leap my lady's part. Five-and-thirty year agone, that would ha’ been, and Master Grevil there in petticoats. There's none such now."

The fiddler said nothing.

"There's few enough that keep old Law.” He knocked the water from his reedpipe. Few to play, and fewer still to set them on. This job would be their last this season. Then wakes and weddings to the hobnail rout, for pence and barleystraw and broken meats. Then nought.

No companies now; or none of quality, his mistress’ journeymen. None sworn. Chance men, all of them, rogues and gallowsclappers. Here's my Lady branded for a quarrel, and his cully dead. Here's their Second Witch whipped naked at the cart's tail, he that got a squinch-eyed goblin on a punk. Here's that fiddler that they'd picked up on the road last Hallowsweek. Stark shoulder and a melancholy in his wits. They griped him, and he played a-scrawl. Ah well, their last was hanged.

He sighed and thought of all the witchboys—witty striplings—that he'd taught to play. Their clever tongues.

"Pack up,” he said.

And still the fiddler gazed. At nothing. At the guisers’ play. Eight or nine clumping lackwits and a red-haired Ashes. Her? Would the fool sweep her chimney?

"What art thou agaze at?"

The bright hair burning through the ashes. Bracken in the rain. Too far. She's run too far before him; turning back, she bids him on.

"A ghost."

"Well, I see a quart pot. And the road."

I see a ditch and crows.

Leapfire lay dead in straw.

When Ashes that was Margaret turned there was no child in green. No gallantry, no grief, no huntsman. Nor no great conjunction of the planets. Time had changed the sky. But here was here, and there was Grevil, looking dazed and faintly worried: like himself. His face was smirched with ink or ashes; he was taking notes. And there was Barbary in state attire, like a great frost.
Now
was now. Still Lightfast: for the guisers held the floor, Hob's men. Their mystery was at its crisis. In a moment, it would be her entrance.

"O my son!” cried the Fool. “My only son and heir is slain. Call for a midwife!"

The Sun was trying not to laugh. Perhaps his wig tickled him.

And from the circle in the smoke, t'Awd Moon crowed, “Aye, get thee up, lad, and I's gape for thee.” Smirking in her beard, she hoisted her petticoats. “Here's an undertaking."

"Here's a covert,” said a ranting lad who peered up her skirts. “Wi’ a vixen in't. And eight nine ten young cubs would have a gooseneck for to grease their beards."

"Nay, ‘tis an imp-tree of apricocks."

"Up with your petticoat, have at your plum-tree!” Back to their long-practiced lines.

Mag Moonwise set her spectacles askew. “Here's prigging of orchards. An thou bites't at me codlins, thou's find a great worm."

"'Twill make me a rare apple pie."

"Not wi'out mustard,” called the Fool.

Here too was gallantry, though down at heel: three witchboys, black, white, red, in fripperies. And there was Madam. At her nod, they swaggered through the crowd; they elbowed. There was one in cap and feathers, sauntering, hand at hilts: a termagant. Her buckler was a dish. Ashes gazed, uneasy, at the second witch, a whitely wanton in a haze of huffcap, and an antick gown of green. There were twigs inwoven in the torn brocade, so many pulled and ravelled threads that it looked like green bearskin or an unmown lawn. With sheepmuck. But she knew that gown. She'd seen it but a moment since, and thirty years ago on Annot. And she knew that bloodnailed hag, the third unseely sister. Knew what deity she mocked, who could annihilate her with a breath: a mawkin Annis. Strolling up disdainfully, from east and north, they broke the guisers’ circle. Walked unbidden in their room: the threshing floor where lay the bones of Barleycorn. They perched.

The guisers gave them black looks. Nudged and kicked them. But to stop the guising were to ruin all, hay and harvest: so the play went on.

Beyond the circle, Barbary quirked her chin. The hinds and shepherds nodded and moved in.

Cap-and-Feather squatted by the corpse.

"Here's a knocking i't cellar. Here's a bird flies up."

And Bearskin chanted, growling out,
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds..."

"Although he is little, his family is great ... “
sang Bloodnails in her glassy voice.

"Shog off,” said Pipe-and-Tabor to his fellows. “Clear away. Let's have their mystery clean through."

"Who pays thee?” said the player witch. Half-drew her dagger. “They're clart-arse hinds. We're masters."

"And we once were journeymen,” old Pipe-and-Tabor said. “And servants to a greater mistress. Keep thy pence.” He stalked off. The shepherds let him pass.

Hob's men were stirring up like bees.

"Put up thy steel, for shame,” said Grevil. “Here is holy ground."

The player sheathed; but kept a ribboned chopine in the ring: so Ashes might not enter, so Leapfire might not rise. “We do but game.” A dazzling complicit smile. “I hear that your mastership dotes on the quality. Would you see us play an antimasque? Of Slae and Morag? Hulver in his cups?"

"Come away, man. You're drunk.” A second of the players’ men, the stiff-armed fiddler, took her elbow. The witch in her wavered, slid away. A man in tinsel glared and staggered, swaying in her heels. Fell back a step. The ring renewed itself. “Cloud ale's what you want,” the fiddler said. “Away and drench.” Then he turned to the guisers. “Go on. We're naught to you, all bravery. We jig for coppers and oblivion. You bring the Sun."